For some reason I have a different take on this. I can't explain it, but a few things stick with me. One is, her father says it is not unusual for her to take the battery out of her phone. What kind of logic would explain this? She was also over drawn in her checking account and had plans for her father to help her balance it. I just wonder if the parents are strict and maybe she has had some problems conforming to their rules. I'm not saying that they don't love and care for her, but there can be inner family problems that people don't want to air in public. I pray for her safety and return, no matter what. Some of this just doesn't make sense.

For some reason I have a different take on this. I can't explain it, but a few things stick with me. One is, her father says it is not unusual for her to take the battery out of her phone. What kind of logic would explain this? She was also over drawn in her checking account and had plans for her father to help her balance it. I just wonder if the parents are strict and maybe she has had some problems conforming to their rules. I'm not saying that they don't love and care for her, but there can be inner family problems that people don't want to air in public. I pray for her safety and return, no matter what. Some of this just doesn't make sense.

I have to say that I was thinking she took off, to be with someone, new life for whatever the reason would be. Maybe for the reasons you stated, I don't know. I agree some of this doesn't make sense. The being on the bridge for one thing, could she have been walking to meet someone? Am I mistaken that she wasn't on any surveilance inside the complex? And I agree, no cameras at the one place Morgan goes missing? I know there has been a lot of discussion about the car that was taken that night to go to the concert. I'm really mixed up on that. Was it Morgan's car in the parking lot? Reason I'm asking is this topic sure seems to be the hot discussion on another forum, and I'm not understanding the car situation. Also shouldn't her friends have called her family right from the start? That night?

The message that she would get a ride back with friends, was that a text ?Because if she was my friend that I had come there with who was now outside far away from home, like no bus, not within walking distance, I might have asked, like who ? What friend do you have out there that just happened to be there outside a Metallica concert that isn't going in ?

The message that she would get a ride back with friends, was that a text ?Because if she was my friend that I had come there with who was now outside far away from home, like no bus, not within walking distance, I might have asked, like who ? What friend do you have out there that just happened to be there outside a Metallica concert that isn't going in ?

Exactly, her friends have to know more. And I sure hope they have told all to LE.

For some reason I have a different take on this. I can't explain it, but a few things stick with me. One is, her father says it is not unusual for her to take the battery out of her phone. What kind of logic would explain this? She was also over drawn in her checking account and had plans for her father to help her balance it. I just wonder if the parents are strict and maybe she has had some problems conforming to their rules. I'm not saying that they don't love and care for her, but there can be inner family problems that people don't want to air in public. I pray for her safety and return, no matter what. Some of this just doesn't make sense.

I have to say that I was thinking she took off, to be with someone, new life for whatever the reason would be. Maybe for the reasons you stated, I don't know. I agree some of this doesn't make sense. The being on the bridge for one thing, could she have been walking to meet someone? Am I mistaken that she wasn't on any surveilance inside the complex? And I agree, no cameras at the one place Morgan goes missing? I know there has been a lot of discussion about the car that was taken that night to go to the concert. I'm really mixed up on that. Was it Morgan's car in the parking lot? Reason I'm asking is this topic sure seems to be the hot discussion on another forum, and I'm not understanding the car situation. Also shouldn't her friends have called her family right from the start? That night?

No Rose, really good questions. For me, I see no reason for her to run from anything- she had a life of privelege with really "open" parents that gave her more of a leash I will give my daughter at her age.

I personally do not believe the bridge sighting is true, or is Morgan. Morgan's car was NOT at the venue. She drove to meet Amy Snead, and then a friend drove them to the concert. When Morgan's parents reported her missing, they made arrangements for her friend to drive the car back to their house, where it is now.

I completely agree that when they returned to the house and her car was there, they should have called her parents. Again to me, that points to them being of the opinion she was with someone she knew.

That said, I would really like it if you were right and I was wrong. Heartbreaking.

Thanks Blink. My view, that even a life of privelege comes with demands, and maybe, just maybe she didn't want those demands, and a better life, or she may think a better life was calling. I sure hope that is what happened and she will realize that she made a big mistake. I usually get a feeling right away when I follow cases, but with Morgan I go back and forth with my feelings, which is very odd with me.

Something that keeps popping out to me is that she had "tickets" for 6mo. not a"ticket" could Morgan have gone out of the arena to give someone else a ticket she purchased for them,maybe someone her friends did not know about?

On page 1 of this thread, in an article posted by linds1980, one sentence of the article says:

"Dan Harrington, Morganís father said he had bought tickets for Morgan and her group months before the show."

So her dad bought tickets for her and several friends, which explains tickets with an s.

Her taking the battery out of the cell is puzzling to me.Did she have one of the newer phones where she could be tracked ?I was looking at some on line and I thought it was a good thing for teens. Safety & spying for anxious parents ? Like me. If it was just to save battery power, she could just turn the thing off.

She is known nationwide as the beautiful young blonde in the black miniskirt who vanished from a Metallica concert in Charlottesville over the weekend, but to her friends and family, Morgan Harrington is the kind woman who volunteered her summers to work with children from violent homes, letting little girls play with her golden tresses.

She is the young woman who enjoyed the "Twilight" novels, the movie "Harriet the Spy" the television show "Real Housewives of Orange County" and the music of Jerry Garcia.

And she is the quirky young woman whose list of what to bring to a recent Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival included a full-length mirror and a hula hoop.

"She loves putting on her makeup and looking good," said her mother, Gil Harrington of Roanoke County. "But she's the kind of girl who's also happy sleeping in a tent for a week. Usually 'makeup girls' aren't like that."

Gil Harrington, a nurse, and her husband, Dan, Carilion Clinic's vice president for academic affairs, have been offering reporters sundry tidbits about their missing daughter's life for days now, steeling themselves for interviews as they seek to keep Morgan's name and picture at the forefront of public consciousness.

It has been, admittedly, a harrowing process, one they have endured even as they struggle to help investigators working to find their daughter. "Having to find DNA samples and dental records of your child -- it's not a path or ground you thought you'd have to walk," Gil Harrington said Tuesday in her home on Strathmore Lane. "There's no template for it."

Harrington, a 20-year-old Virginia Tech education major, disappeared Saturday night after leaving the John Paul Jones Arena at the University of Virginia. She had gone there with friends, but between 8:30 and 9:30 p.m. she called them to say she was outside and couldn't get back in, and that she would either find them after the show or find another way home. The next day, a passerby found her purse and cellphone in a small parking area between the arena and an athletic field. The cellphone's battery was gone.

Harrington, 5-foot-6 and 120 pounds, was wearing a black T-shirt with the name of metal band Pantera in tan letters across the front, a black miniskirt, black tights and black knee-high boots.

Virginia State Police, in a news conference in Charlottesville on Wednesday, said they have received 100 calls from around the country and are following up on all of them. State police have set up a new tip line, (434) 352-3467, and also plan to announce a Crimestoppers reward of at least $50,000 as early as today. Police also noted that they have searched a large area around the arena three times, using search dogs and a SWAT team that was in the city for training. Otherwise, Lt. Joe Rader conceded, police have little new to say about the criminal investigation.

"It's very disheartening, in all honesty, that this time has gone by and we haven't had any kind of contact or any leads that have worked out," Rader said.

In Roanoke County, meanwhile, the Harringtons -- who also have a 22-year-old son, Alex -- are sharing their daughter's life with the national and local media, fielding phone calls, traveling to studios and sitting for interviews. They have even shown reporters their daughter's bedroom, the decor of which exemplifies what her friends call her eclectic taste in everything: Her bedsheets feature drawings of little fairy princesses, and Tibetan prayer cloths adorn the wooden headboard. A collection of cobalt-blue bottles sits atop a curio cabinet in one corner. On the walls are posters of musical acts as diverse as Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, the Beatles and Bob Marley. A Beach Boys album cover is taped to the wall, as is a Barry Manilow single. A full laundry basket sits on a chest and her open suitcase sits on the floor at the foot of her bed.

Before the concert, Morgan Harrington tried on three different outfits for her mother to appraise; ultimately she chose the all-black ensemble. The purses she discarded were left in a pile in the room.

The Harringtons are certain their daughter is not a runaway. "We're very close," said Dan Harrington. "We talk every day."

"She does what she's supposed to do," Gil Harrington said. "I called her two weeks ago and told her to get her flu shots. She got it the next day."

The Harringtons have a key to their daughter's apartment, and they also have the password to her computer. ("What's there to hide?" Gil Harrington asked.) Morgan's father does her banking, and she had asked him to help her with her algebra when she returned from Charlottesville.

"She always spoke to her dad, every day, and she would never be without her cellphone," said John Reburn, owner of Roanoke Valley Printworks in downtown Roanoke, where Morgan Harrington worked her summer after high school. "I called her my L.A. girl -- super, super out-there friendly. She was a hard worker who still managed to look like a million bucks. She always looked incredible."

Chelsea Helm, who attended Northside High School with Harrington and attends Virginia Tech with her as well, said Harrington's well-known sense of fashion "is creative and a little glamorous."

But like Reburn and Harrington's parents, Helm said the young woman's intelligence is one of her most notable traits. "She reads more than the average person our age," said Helm, 21. "We go shopping in downtown Blacksburg, but she spent time studying."

From the time she was 12 until she graduated from Lord Botetourt High School in 2007, Harrington volunteered every summer with Forgotten Victims, a program for children from kindergarten to fifth grade who have witnessed violence in their homes.

Harrington often let the little girls in the program play with her long blond hair, said Diane Kelly, executive director of Mental Health America of Roanoke Valley, which runs the program.

"She just let the kids be kids, and if that meant playing with her hair, fine," Kelly said. "They did finger-painting with pudding, and she had more fun doing that than the kids did. But she could be a disciplinarian. She'd say, 'We don't behave that way.' "

While Harrington's parents work to remind the public that their daughter is missing, her friends are also staying busy.

Helm and others are organizing a vigil for 7 p.m. today at the football field at Northside, where Harrington attended school before transferring to Lord Botetourt.

And for now, the Harringtons cling to hope, doing what they can to improve their daughter's chances of coming back to them.

"We're going through a slew of 'last times' now," Gil Harrington said. "You know, 'the last time this was touched, she touched it.' I am so afraid we're going to have a slew of firsts, 'first time without her on the holidays...' "

Thanks Bud's Girl, I really am all over the place with this case. I have some opinions, which I'm hesitant to post. I guess what I'm kind of thinking is sometimes a parent really thinks they know their child, but the reality is they don't, their child can have a whole different type of life going on that the parents are not aware of. I have no idea if this is the case with this family.

Maybe things seem a bit off with what we know what the friends say because the friends have not been 100 % forthcoming with the MEDIA. She must have had a boyfriend at some point. ( I hope LE is looking into the past bf's ) I don't think a 20 year old girl would tell her Mama everything, but she would tell her gf's and her roommate would know alot.I don't think a girl who liked makeup, had a ton of clothes, school, her family, her car and all the comforts she had would just do a runner like this. She had nothing to run away from and it sounds as if she was having a great life and that was going to continue. For some reason, this girl reminds me of Natalee Holloway. I also remember a case where an ex hubby put a GPS tracking thing on his wife's car and was stalking her. Showing up where she was, just by chance, etc.

Thanks Bud's Girl, I really am all over the place with this case. I have some opinions, which I'm hesitant to post. I guess what I'm kind of thinking is sometimes a parent really thinks they know their child, but the reality is they don't, their child can have a whole different type of life going on that the parents are not aware of. I have no idea if this is the case with this family.

So true ... her parents could have been really close to her, had the password to her computer & all, but it would be the rare 20 yr old who didn't have a few secrets from their parents. IMO

Maybe things seem a bit off with what we know what the friends say because the friends have not been 100 % forthcoming with the MEDIA. She must have had a boyfriend at some point. ( I hope LE is looking into the past bf's ) I don't think a 20 year old girl would tell her Mama everything, but she would tell her gf's and her roommate would know alot.I don't think a girl who liked makeup, had a ton of clothes, school, her family, her car and all the comforts she had would just do a runner like this. She had nothing to run away from and it sounds as if she was having a great life and that was going to continue. For some reason, this girl reminds me of Natalee Holloway. I also remember a case where an ex hubby put a GPS tracking thing on his wife's car and was stalking her. Showing up where she was, just by chance, etc.

I don't know Kat, I'm with you no way does a 20 year old tell her parents everything, but friends, special friends oh yeah. Something is missing with all this, just can't quite piece it together. If I say this, by all means I don't want people to think I'm bashing anyone, but everything seems to be so sugar coated about Morgan, I don't doubt Morgan is a fine girl, but realistically all of us have something about us that isn't all sugary and sweet. I certainly hope she has just run off and she is fine.

BLACKSBURG, VA., October 30, 2009 -- We sincerely thank the Virginia State Police Department, University of Virginia Police Department, members of Metallica, and the many people who have shown their support in this difficult time. We are doing everything in our power to bring Morgan home. We appreciate your prayers and ask that you continue to share any information you can with law enforcement so that we can find our daughter.

Maybe things seem a bit off with what we know what the friends say because the friends have not been 100 % forthcoming with the MEDIA. She must have had a boyfriend at some point. ( I hope LE is looking into the past bf's ) I don't think a 20 year old girl would tell her Mama everything, but she would tell her gf's and her roommate would know alot.I don't think a girl who liked makeup, had a ton of clothes, school, her family, her car and all the comforts she had would just do a runner like this. She had nothing to run away from and it sounds as if she was having a great life and that was going to continue. For some reason, this girl reminds me of Natalee Holloway. I also remember a case where an ex hubby put a GPS tracking thing on his wife's car and was stalking her. Showing up where she was, just by chance, etc.

I don't know Kat, I'm with you no way does a 20 year old tell her parents everything, but friends, special friends oh yeah. Something is missing with all this, just can't quite piece it together. If I say this, by all means I don't want people to think I'm bashing anyone, but everything seems to be so sugar coated about Morgan, I don't doubt Morgan is a fine girl, but realistically all of us have something about us that isn't all sugary and sweet. I certainly hope she has just run off and she is fine.

I agree with you that whatever is "not known" to everyone, is probably the key to finding her. This bugs me terribly, from Thursday Evening 10/29 Nancy Grace show:

GRACE: That`s what I don`t understand. If she was just going to the bathroom, then why did she go outside the arena? Have they looked at her cell phone? Did anyone contact her and lure her out?

HARRINGTON: It does not appear there were other calls to Morgan during that period of time. There was some texting of Morgan to a young gentleman that she was friends with, but it was no one in Charlottesville. It was further away and so ó but he`s not a suspect at all at this time.

GRACE: Right. So they were just probably texting about what, the concert, that she was at the concert, stuff like that?

I just feel also because the friends are not forthcoming with info valuable time has been wasted. Maybe some drugs were involved, and that is why, I have no idea, but if there was drugs, who cares, this young woman is much more important then getting in trouble about drugs. I wouldn't think anyone would be that surprised by that anyway, it was a Metallica concert, and you are going to tell me drugs weren't floating around? I was young once, and have been to a great deal of concerts, and frankly there was always pot smoking at everyone, and who knows what else. I pray she took off with a boyfriend.

Lastly, you have to consider the possibility of the connection of the Metzler and Childs murders in Caldwell Field. Childs Father is VA State Trooper. I can state as a fact that the possibility of someone posing as LE or security is in the top 3 of their offender profile for these murders.

Anyone reading here know if Morgan had a former BF that is VT deputy or security?

Does anyone know if Amy Snead is related to Special Agent Garland Snead from VA who investigated the Short murders who were also shot in the head?

Logged

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.Mohandas Gandhi

Lastly, you have to consider the possibility of the connection of the Metzler and Childs murders in Caldwell Field. Childs Father is VA State Trooper. I can state as a fact that the possibility of someone posing as LE or security is in the top 3 of their offender profile for these murders.

Anyone reading here know if Morgan had a former BF that is VT deputy or security?

Does anyone know if Amy Snead is related to Special Agent Garland Snead from VA who investigated the Short murders who were also shot in the head?

I have been working on trying to confirm that. Unverified, but I am told they are in fact relatives, fwiw.B

I found this interesting in the Short case. The Henry County Sheriff's Office put years of manpower and toil into the case, but those efforts were eclipsed by scandal in November 2006, when Sheriff Frank Cassell and 12 of his officers were indicted by federal authorities as the culmination of a corruption probe.

Cassell, who had appeared frequently on national television during the early stages of the Short investigation as a spokesman for law enforcement, ultimately was sentenced to eight months in prison for lying to a federal investigator.

Members of the task force say the federal indictments did not in any way impair the investigation.

"Luckily no one who was assigned to the task force was affected by the indictments," said Sgt. Curtis Spence of the sheriff's office.

Reynolds said he believes the negative publicity surrounding the indictments resulted in unfair suspicions about the handling of the Short case. The new sheriff, Lane Perry, "will not rest until it is settled," he said, and neither will others in law enforcement. "You can hear the emotion in their voices."